Quick Takes

Places to go

On the run for more than four months and nearly 3,000 miles, a Jack Russell terrier named Gidget returned home to owner Diane Hartkorn. On April 22, Gidget ran away from her home in Bucks County, Pa. In the ensuing months, the little dog managed to travel across the continent before a good Samaritan found her wandering the Portland, Ore., suburb of Tualatin in early September and dropped her off at an animal shelter. Staffers there discovered a microchip embedded in the dog that revealed its owner lived in Pennsylvania. On Sept. 23, Gidget flew to Philadelphia International Airport to reunite with Hartkorn and her family. As soon as an airline worker released the dog just feet from Hartkorn, Gidget began sprinting down the street. Airport workers were able to catch Gidget before she made it to I-95. “Well,” Hartkorn told local television reporters, “now we all know how she got to Oregon.”

Taper caper

Thankfully for a Canadian man, none of the 51 live turtles he stuffed down his pants to smuggle out of the United States were of the snapping variety. Canada Border Services officers caught Kai Xu in August trying to cross into Windsor, Ontario, from Detroit with scores of the reptiles taped to his legs. The Canadian officials turned him over to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents who made the official count of 51 eastern box turtles, red-eared sliders, and diamondback terrapins. Xu could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of smuggling.

Curbside service

For mourners on the move, a Saginaw, Mich., funeral parlor has an enticing offer. Paradise Funeral Chapel has installed a drive-thru viewing window so mourners can pay their last respects without leaving their vehicles. Funeral home president Ivan Phillips says the drive-thru casket viewing allows people who are afraid of mortuaries to participate in the ceremony.

Trunk trouble

No one doubts the Italian designers at Ferrari can design a sports car. But American regulators are demanding the luxury sports car manufacturer design a better trunk. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced on Aug. 7 that Ferrari would recall nearly 3,400 Ferrari F458s because the mid-engined supercar has a trunk without an emergency escape latch. U.S. regulations require that trunks can be opened from the inside in the event that someone gets trapped inside. Despite the recall, Ferrari enthusiasts may be encouraged. At least the recall indicates that the $230,000 joyride has storage space.

Beer run

Historic Bruges, Belgium, will soon be the envy of the beer-drinking world. The medieval city’s local brewery, De Halve Maan, announced it would begin construction next year on the world’s second beer pipeline. The pipeline will connect the 500-year-old brewery with its bottling facility to save the historic city’s streets from the wear and tear of 500 truck shipments per day. Gelsenkirchen, Germany, boasts the other beer pipeline connecting a local brewery with a local soccer stadium.

Curtain snatcher

Police in Crestview, Fla., have charged a local 33-year-old with breaking into an empty house, staying there for days, and then stealing the curtains. Authorities say Bryan Lee Brown broke into the home on Aug. 29 by cutting a screen window and stayed there until Aug. 31. When the homeowner returned, she discovered her curtains missing and some of Brown’s belongings strewn about the home. Names left on the items left behind gave police the lead they needed to arrest Brown and charge him with burglary and theft. The curtains have not been located.

Strange cure

Want to stop a nosebleed? Try stuffing your nostrils with cured pork. So says Dr. Sonal Saraiya and her team of researchers at Detroit Medical Center whose 2011 medical journal article on the benefits of “nasal packing with strips of cured pork” to stop nosebleeds “won” the Medicine prize at the 2014 Ig Nobel awards. Presenters from the Annals of Improbable Research distributed the awards—a tongue-in-cheek homage to peculiar scientific research and inventions—during an event at Harvard University on Sept. 18. A team of researchers from the United States, Czech Republic, India, and Japan took home the Public Health prize for their research into whether owning a cat is mentally hazardous.

Taster’s choice?

If Kopi Luwak wasn’t exotic enough, Black Ivory Coffee has created a new line of beans that will disgust as many as it pleases. Indonesian coffee farmers making Kopi Luwak have found a way to profit by scouring the dung of Asian palm civets for undigested coffee beans and marketing the result as the world’s most expensive coffee. Based in northern Thailand, Black Ivory Coffee believes whatever civets can do, elephants can do better. According to the company, its elephants will eat coffee cherries, flavor the beans during digestion, and defecate what the company calls “the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee.”

Out cold

A Norwegian toddler living outside Norway’s northernmost city gave her family a fright on Sept. 15 when an extreme sleepwalking episode left her miles from home. According to the family of Thea Sorensen, the 4-year-old dreamed her house caught fire. Then, she donned thin boots and sleepwalked into the cold night air wearing nothing but her sleeping clothes. At more than 70 degrees north, the nearby city of Honningsvag lies well within the Arctic Circle. Thankfully, Honningsvag police discovered the girl in the town square, more than three miles from home, but not apparently hurt. Mother Nadia Sorensen told the Norwegian newspaper VG that Thea often sleepwalks, but “she is rock tough” and “a very vigorous girl.”